RE: ice age

Argall Family (grargall@alphalink.com.au)
Sat, 14 Aug 1999 10:02:45 +1000

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And as the North Atlantic Sink rises to the surface again in the southern
ocean, somewhere southwest of Australia (contributing to the massive amount
of life in deep Antarctic waters), I have always presumed that the whole
Southern Oscillation is directly connected to the North Atlantic Sink. The
SO comes about because as the globe rotates the water tries not to rotate,
and South America sticks its long finger in and the water goes up and around
the south Pacific, in a circle subject to oscillation. There is then an
actual gradient of water level, perceptible by satellite, back across the
central Pacific, the water turned north by South America pushing back east
with varying pressure. There is an associated variation in air pressure.
When that westward air push is weak, you have the El Nino circumstance (El
Nino, the Christ child, arising from the Peruvian expectation of this thing
producing devastating rain at Christmas; how odd that we now have the
invention of 'La Nina' for the opposite effect)

Down here El Nino means monsoonal weather tears east, rather than southeast,
out of Indonesia, causing devastation in Pacific Island states, and drought,
instead of summer rain, in Australia. El Nino also impacts on the Northern
Pacific, as American readers know. How El Nino then feeds back across north
America and into the Atlantic circumstance again, I leave to northern
hemisphere speculation.

But while I believe we must try to be less wasteful of resources, I tend to
the view that vulcanism has the major effect on big climate trends. As I
also tend to the view that a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide
may benefit cellular health.

Otherwise, I agree with Phil, though we still have to solve the
ozone-weakening effect of those grazing ruminant producers of methane. Each
chicken, not cow? I'd like to see John Wayne movies redone with chooks not
cows.... Imagine the impact on the macho... the long long chook drive to
Kansas, sitting round the campfire at night re-writing the state biology
curriculum, arguing whether the world is round, or whether it's just a long
henpecking route north... Pecos Bill astride a sturdy turkey...

It's the mythologies we have to redraw.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu [mailto:owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu]On
Behalf Of Phil Gillman
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 1999 4:15 AM
To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: ice age

Another ice age is indeed very possible, as one of the most likely
scenarios to result from global warming is the disruption of the North
Atlantic Sink, the area off of Greenland where glacial runoff sinks into
the deep, rather than remaining on the surface. Unfortunately, if the
volume of this fresh water becomes too great, then the sink is
disrupted. (So what's the big deal?) well, if the sink is disrupted, the
surface currents are then inturn disrupted, and the surface current most
likely to be effected is the Gulf Stream. The failure of the sink would
most likely stop the flow of the gulf stream, and almost immediately
plung europe into an ice age, which would in turn effect global weather
systems drastically. This Appears to have happened in the past, often
occuring suddenly, over the course of only 2 to 5 years altering global
weather patterns.

Many scientists are begining to see this as the most likely outcome of
continued global warming (a sort of ecological rebalancing perhaps ;-)
SO, grow organic, and rotate in grazing animals- for that seems to be
the best way to survive a drought, AND reduce global warming at the same
time-

Phil Gillman
Sustainable Systems Consulting and Marketing
philmang@hotmail.com

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